This invention relates to integrated circuits, and more particularly, to integrated circuits and methods for use with digital cameras.
Recently, Digital Still Cameras (DSCs) have become a very popular consumer appliance appealing to a wide variety of users ranging from photo hobbyists, web developers, real estate agents, insurance adjusters, photo-journalists to everyday photography enthusiasts. Recent advances in large resolution CCD arrays coupled with the availability of low-power digital signal processors (DSPs) has led to the development of DSCs that come quite close to the resolution and quality offered by traditional film cameras. These DSCs offer several additional advantages compared to traditional film cameras in terms of data storage, manipulation, and transmission. The digital representation of captured images enables the user to easily incorporate the images into any type of electronic media and transmit them over any type of network. The ability to instantly view and selectively store captured images provides the flexibility to minimize film waste and instantly determine if the image needs to be captured again. With its digital representation the image can be corrected, altered, or modified after its capture. See for example, Venkataraman et al, “Next Generation Digital Camera Integration and Software Development Issues” in Digital Solid State Cameras: Design and Applications, 3302 Proc. SPIE (1998). Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 5,528,293 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,412,425 disclose aspects of digital still camera systems including storage of images on memory cards and power conservation for battery-powered cameras.